1
Pietro whispered in Wanda's ear. His sister grinned wide enough to show teeth then waved her fingers good-bye to Tabitha. Tabitha blew her a kiss and then leaned back into Kurt.
Pietro slowly paced backward to an empty couch. Wanda sashayed with him. Her brother laid back along the entire length of the couch. Wanda clutched her hands behind her back and frowned at not having any room for herself. His sister glanced to the side as if realizing a crafty ploy and proceeded to delicately kneel between Pietro's splayed legs and climb...
Ms. Munroe decided she had had enough of this. But before she could take a step, somehow Mr. Lensherr had cut her off. "Join me for a drink, Storm?", he asked with an opened bottle of Lance' whiskey and two glasses.
"Magnus.", Ororo scolded him. She caught herself. "Sorry. Eric, please."
"Don't worry, I prefer 'Magnus'.", he told her.
The woman sighed. "You should prefer 'Eric'.", she started. "But that's not here nor there. The children/"
"Ought to be left alone on their one night to be left alone.", Eric interrupted her.
Ororo touched her forehead in an attempt to regain her patience. She began again. "Alright, your children. As in your actual offspring."
"Oh yes, my twins.", he acknowledged. "They did often hang on each other before Wanda became...troubled."
"She is about to become trouble.", Ororo told him. "Both are."
Magneto frowned. "Perhaps you should join me without the drinks."
2
All the teenagers were involved with themselves. Then they heard a tremendous crack of thunder as if the lightning that caused it was three feet away and somehow frizzled. One of Jaime ran into the main room. "Magneto and Storm are flying over the back yard."
The entire room cleared.
3
As the young mutants rapidly gathered outside, so did Dr. McCoy and Logan.
"We gotta do something, Beast.", Logan yelled over the rapidly rising wind.
Dr. McCoy looked up at the other two members of the staff as they circled each other well above the ground. "And what exactly is that, pray tell?"
"Come on.", Logan commanded and the two set out underneath the others.
The teens, for their part, appeared to be a field of windsocks at an air port as everyone who had long hair had it blowing in the direction of updraft Storm generated to support herself. Everyone could feel the tingle in the air from Magneto commanding one of the four fundamental forces of the universe itself as he stayed aloft in front of her.
Toad just wondered why everyone else thought hanging around this was a good idea. That thought was reinforced as a wrought iron lawn chair came flying toward them.
Sunspot immediately darkened and jumped in its way, having it nearly harmlessly slam against him. As he sat in the chair, Jubilee scolded. "You're not invulnerable Roberto!"
Rhane looked around. "Anyone?"
"On it.", Iceman declared. In a few moments a transparent sheet that was inches thick separated them from the rest of the grounds.
"I meant, did anyone have popcorn?", she explained.
Amara held a bag of microwave popcorn between her hands and it slowly expanded. "Thanks.", Rhane told her.
Ray held a soda can toward Iceman. "Here's something you can do." Bobby touched his finger to it and it gained a thin layer of frost.
"Jean, what are they saying?", Kurt asked.
"I'm not putting my mind anywhere near that.", she replied.
X-23 shrugged. "I can hear them."
A few people looked to Jean. She sighed. "Do you mind sharing? Just the voices, now. Not everything that you can hear."
X-23 shrugged again. The redhead focused and an overlay of sound sort of just became noticed by the all the others.
"You should have been the very first to back me in stopping your twins, Magnus.", Ororo warned.
"And why should the great Magnus Magneto Rex have stepped in to make you comfortable by keeping others under the thumb of the reigning kyriarky?", the man shot back. He rolled up his sleeve to show the numbers tattooed there. "I have had quite enough with others saying that not conforming to a culture is something to be stopped."
"Are you truly playing the oppressed card with an African?", Storm asked, her eyes glowing with ever larger lighting bolts.
"I'm pointing to a fact that most of us have never stopped to consider.", Magneto told her with eyes glowing from ever increasing static discharges.
"We are an entirely new species. And as such, we are going to not only have experiences that are solely our own but inevitably develop a culture that is solely our own. The co-culture of blacks in this country is the only one truly matriarchal as a result of slavery breaking up families and children being more likely to be kept with a mother than a father for infant care. The counter-sexual community having the idea of 'coming out' that no other culture mimics.
"As mutants, we are going to go about things in ways that have never been seen before, never been considered before, and sometimes never been tolerated before. But those will at least be ours. Take our custom of adoption: so many mutants are thrown from the homes of the homo sapiens that birthed them that we nearly universally care for the young, whether they be as opposed as Charles and I or as different as you and Logan. We know more about biology than nearly anyone else simply from our quests to cope after our manifestation. I'm not ashamed of these customs. These new traditions are not just ours but admirable.
"I don't know what our marriages will look like, or how we will end up dealing with family. We're so new: who knows what our beliefs will be about aging, or death once someone with a power to let us know arrives. Considering that you have fought just as many Sentinels as I have, and cleared the use of your abilities with National Weather Service as often as I've cleared mine with the FCC - can you honestly say that our culture truly has a respect for abstract government? And so if you want to berate someone for something they're doing let alone appearing to be doing: please, present more than simply an 'ew' factor left over from one of their cultures.
"We are the future, Storm. Not them.", he warned. "And that sometimes means doing things in new ways."
Storm held contempt in the voice the teenagers heard. "You're drunk, Magnus."
"No, I'm disagreeing with you when you're wrong.", Magneto countered. "Now that may be so rare that you can't consider otherwise, my dear. But that is your problem more than it is mine.
"If not, point to where I am so wrong that we need to be flying over the grounds making a spectacle of ourselves. I'd be proud to do it just because we can. I'd be ashamed to be doing so to solve a problem that can be solved through discourse with another mutant."
Storm drifted close to him. "When you are sober, Magnus."
The two slowly landed.
The assembled teenagers decided that the show was over nearly at the same pace it was decided that there was going to be a show at all. *Bamf*s and silver streaks and the thrust of rockets and all manner of travel disappeared the haphazardly assembled audience.
While Dr. McCoy greeted Mr. Lensherr and Ms. Munroe as they settled again on the earth, Mr. Logan made a bee line for the ice shield that remained. "Don't think you're leaving that there.", he yelled.
Jean looked around for Bobby and did not find him. "Fine. Amara, can you help with this, please?"
Magma lit up and the ice shield started to melt away. When constructed, the water vapor from the air itself had been used. Now, Jean tried to guide the melted water from the ice to the pool in a spray of fine mist, allowing the air to soak up what the pool would not.
3
Magneto was standing on an exterior balcony of the mansion, overlooking the grounds he and Storm had flown over in their argument. "You might as well come out and share the company, Toad.", the elder instructed.
Todd still felt the way he did about that name. But to give ol' Mags his credit, Todd never failed to here the capital 'T' he used. The boy slunk out onto the balcony and adopted the stance comfortable to him, crouching with his long legs guarding him and his hands sharing some of his weight on the floor. Looking up, Magneto appeared to be of towering height with latent energy giving his white hair a glow. Todd looked down, considering his own appearance next to the man.
"Yo, can I ask you something?", the boy began.
Magneto switched the side the whiskey bottle was on. "I may have demolished a derelict Sentinel on your behalf, but I agree with Charles that we should abide by local liquor laws."
"No, not that.", Todd objected. "Did you mean what you said to Storm?"
"That she was as worthy an opponent in a debate as the battlefield?", Magneto prompted.
"That we're a new culture.", Todd reminded. "So...maybe...girls might...change how they choose guys, yo."
Magneto looked directly at him for the first time that night. Then he returned his gaze to the grounds of the estate, or perhaps the sky above it. Who knew how Magnus regarded the lines of particle or waveform that emanated on the electromagnetic spectrum from other stars.
"Rogue is a lovely girl, isn't she?", Magneto admitted.
Todd took in a breath. But rather than confirm, he only sighed.
The man continued. "But she's also head strong enough to maintain her personality despite the memories of anyone she's ever come into contact with somewhere in her head. Amazingly powerful, once to the point that multiples of her were racing and teleporting around a telekinetic and magnetic maelstrom with beams of ice and blasts being the only clues to her whereabouts - or so I've been told. Rogue actually may be the one for us all.
"And if she's chosen you, then I don't think any force as trivial as high school is going to change her mind."
Todd looked up with large yellow eyes. "And X-23."
Magneto lightly laughed. "Have you tried to avenge your father by killing her in an honor duel with a katana?"
"No.", Todd scoffed while looking at Magneto as if he was insane.
The man laughed. "Then if she is anything like her father, if she has smelled you and chosen you then nothing will move her from your side."
Todd crouched sullen. Sure, he partly wondered what was wrong with Wolverine and his presumably ex-girlfriends. But even if the entire species was new, he was still the same old him. And it weighed on him.
Magneto regarded the boy. "Toad, have you ever met my daughter?"
"I, uh, live with Wanda, yo."
"No, my other daughter.", the man explained. Magneto pulled out his wallet and it fell to the floor.
Todd handed it back to the man. "Are you sure you're not drunk?", he asked.
Magneto wiggled his fingers at the foil still wrapped around the bottle of whiskey. It floated before them and smoothed into a perfect square. A few more slight gestures and it folded itself into the origami figure of a crane, then a goldfish, then a balloon, and finally a frog. He smiled, and wrapped the foil around the bottle again. Both of them heard the scratch of metal on glass. "Well, not drunk but it would be hard to argue against a little tipsy at this point.", the man admitted.
"Anyway.", he continued. Magneto pulled out a picture of a blonde girl. Well, not blonde anymore - the roots of her hair had begun to grow in green. The man licked his lips in concentration and slowly the two dimensional picture he held flat had glowing points of light above it showing a three dimensional hologram of the girl.
"My daughter, Lorna. She manifested last month. She's a mistress of magnetism, just like her father."
Todd nodded along, believing that the extremely powerful man wanted him to listen.
"Do you think she's beautiful?", Magneto asked.
Todd was taken aback. But the man waited, while holding the hologram of his third child above his hand. "Um...yes?", he hazarded.
"What about Wanda? Do you think she's attractive?", the elder continued.
Todd hung his head in shame. "You know I do."
"And what about me?", Magneto challenged.
Todd was now truly confused. Surely compared to himself Magneto cut a striking figure, but he felt that everyone did. But now that he looked at the man without magnetically formed armor and white hair that looked earned rather than part of Pietro's manifestation, he could begin to see...flaws. Crow's feet of age. A regal jaw to be sure, but not one accustomed to smiling. He knew Mags was a mirthless mother/
"Exactly.", the man interrupted his thoughts. "Ms. Maximoff and Ms. Dane couldn't be more different. Compare the wild nature of one with the demure manner of the other. The sultry brunette that owned the room against the fairly like waif of a blonde. Yet both bore my children. Despite my...let us go with 'volatile nature'.
"While I'm not going to tell you that women don't care about looks, Toad, I am going to let you in on a secret: the looks any woman cares about changes from woman to woman. And that with everyone, there are a number of other things people think about - anything from a sense of humor to sheer power.
"Remember what I have always tried to teach you, whether I was here or not. You are homo superior, Toad. You are more powerful than the ones that came before us will ever experience. Carry yourself as such. And perhaps in this case, expect enough of the world to be yours for the taking."
Magneto poured the last of the whiskey into his glass. The bottle slowly crushed into a ball.
"Uh, glass ain't magnetic.", Todd disbelieved.
"Everything's magnetic if enough flux is exerted upon it. Just not ferrous-magnetic.", Magneto explained. "Besides, quality crystal can be up to eleven percent lead. Sure, this bottle is what?" The man eyed it as if judging a diamond. "Three? Would you say three?"
Todd left the inebriated Magneto. "Whatever you say, Mags."